A Visitor’s Perspective: Looking Back

Many of you were with us through our entire series on Church From a Visitor’s Perspective. Others of you haven’t checked it out yet. For those of you who missed it, here’s what we’ve been looking at the past few weeks.

David Zimmerman, our guest blogger who penned this series, had some great lessons for us. As always, so did you, our readers. Here are a few of the many comments you guys added to the discussion …

“Church is uncomfortable … Where else do you sing songs while staring at a trippy powerpoint with people you don’t know, eat a cracker, take a shot of juice, drop money into a crushed velvet bag and listen to one dude talk about events we weren’t at and worlds we can’t see… -Aaron Marshall on Church from a Visitor’s Perspective

“As a visitor, I want at least one person to shake my hand, tell me their name, ask for my name, and pretty much feign interest in getting to know me. I don’t want that person to be wearing a badge, name-tag, or shirt with the church logo thereby indicating that they are getting to know me because it is their job.” -Revolutionfl on The Welcoming Paradox

“Sometimes I refer to ‘fellowship’ as the ‘f-word.'” -David on Verbose Nomenclature

“Sporting events & theater are NOT the same thing as weekly worship services … when I attend a concert, I expect everyone in the room to be a fan like me. If we intend for our churches to be open to seekers, then by definition they aren’t fans yet.” -Mark Jackson on I Must Be in the Front Row

“When we were in our building at three services, our services were packed out, and we realized that we weren’t growing — like, at all. As soon as we moved into the new rented facility, our attendance shot up, visitor retention improved. It really made a difference.” -Megan on One Is the Loneliest Number

Also, if you really loved this series and the idea of church from a visitor’s perspective, David linked to this article you should check out. It’s the perspective of thirty non-religious reporters for a Seattle paper visiting places of worship.

Joshua Cody

Josh Cody served as our associate editor for several years before moving on to bigger things. Like Texas. These days he lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife, and you can find him online or on Twitter when he's not wrestling code.